Jay Lake - Rocket Science

“The only thing I can figure is someone saw us using his truck when we hauled everything home from the railroad depot the other day. I didn’t mention that to the Sheriff. But it gets worse anyway.”

“For your Dad?” Floyd seemed genuinely concerned, and I silently blessed him for the question. Some days it was easy to remember why we had been such great friends all these years.

“No, Doc Milliken says Dad’s going to be okay. He didn’t come to, so Hauptmann and the doc sent him on to Wichita for X-rays in case he has a concussion. The it-gets-worse part is that the paperwork from the f-panzer was stolen while I was at the library. The fake CID man pulled a con on me, got me away from my desk at the library with a telephone call. When I went back, the papers were gone.”

“Crud,” Floyd said. His brow furrowed for a moment, then he grinned. “We don’t need any paperwork, Vern. That’s why we’ve got you.”

“There was a lot of critical information in those papers, Floyd. For one thing, now I know where the airplane came from.”

Floyd gave me a strange look. “Belgium.”

I remembered the men down in the hole in the ice, the airplane with the dark stain beneath it. “A lot further than that,” I said. “Above the Arctic circle, deep in the ice.”

“Huh.” Floyd didn’t seem impressed. “So after you found out about your dad and these roving killer Nazis, you borrowed Doc Milliken’s car and came all the way out here late at night to check up on us. Wow, chum, that’s some dedication.”

“I didn’t know if those lunatics who tried to kill my Dad would have come here looking for you. Lots of people saw us at the train depot. It won’t be hard for them to put it together.”

Floyd sucked his lower lip under his teeth and shook his head. “Vernon, there’s nothing you could have done if there were Nazis here at the farm. Hit them over the head with your flashlight, maybe.”

I realized what Floyd was politely telling me. “I guess that was pretty stupid of me.”

“They tried to kill your dad, who is, pardon me, a lot tougher than you.” God bless him, he didn’t even look at my legs when he said that. “They capped off this CID guy, and he was a trained soldier. What do you think they would have done to you?”

Floyd’s concern was touching, but a bit misplaced. “What about you and your parents?” I asked. “I almost spilled the whole story last night, but I wanted to catch up on my sleep, talk it over with you at length, and have one last look at the aircraft before we turned ourselves in.”

“Turn ourselves in? For what?” Floyd seemed genuinely shocked. “You’re crazy.”

“Floyd, there are Nazi killers right here in Butler County, looking for something. There is a Nazi secret weapon in your barn. Put two and two together. What else could they possibly want in Kansas? It ain’t wheat or pork bellies, I promise you that. As for me, I would much rather be answering uncomfortable questions from Sheriff Hauptmann and the U.S. Army CID than wondering where the next bullet was going to come from. They almost killed my dad. I don’t need any more warnings.” Even as I spoke, in my heart the airplane soared, giving the lie to my noble sense of self-preservation.

“Bullets aren’t that bad,” muttered Floyd. “A lucky man can dodge them. But I guess you have a point.” His face brightened as he snapped his fingers. “What if we just get that thing out of here? It’s still on your dad’s truck. We could drive it away. Mary Ann has cousins in Ponca City. We could take it down there, get it right out of Kansas altogether.”

“Floyd, the Nazis are looking for a truck from Dunham’s Cartage. They’ll be swarming all over the county soon enough. Besides, I’m not taking that thing to Ponca City. That’s across the state line in Oklahoma, and that makes whatever trouble we’re already in a problem for the FBI.” Which might be on the case already, for all I knew. A dead CID captain was bound to attract a lot of attention in Washington, and the trail lead from Missouri right here to Augusta. “Finally, if we move the aircraft and the f-panzer, we’re just moving the problem. These maniacs will tear up Butler County until they find it, and if they don’t, they’ll tear up the rest of Kansas. We’re safest with our own authorities.”

“No, no, that’s not how it works,” said Floyd. “I seen it plenty of times in Europe. A guy stumbles across something big, a busted bank vault or the treasury under some old chateau. He turns it over to the MPs or the Judge Advocate General, next thing he knows, he’s peeling potatoes on bivouac in Libya while some officers cut themselves in for a percentage and maybe take a few extra medals for the poor guy’s trouble. We need to keep this between us two. See, the way out is, we catch the Nazis and turn ’em over to the authorities ourselves. The war is over, how many of them can there be around here?”

I thought about the inimical Mrs. Sigurdsen from the library. Maybe we could work an angle with her, rat her right into Leavenworth. It was a pleasant if passing fantasy.

I shook my head violently. “Floyd, now you have me thinking like an idiot. We are not going Nazi hunting. The farther away we stay from these people, the safer we will all be. You, me, your parents, my dad. Everybody.”

Floyd opened his mouth to say something else when the fire siren went off in Augusta. We were more than ten miles away from town, but when the wind was out of the west, you could hear it. That siren was loud.

“Oh, crud,” said Floyd, turning to run back into the house. “I hope that’s not a refinery fire.”

The Mobil refinery was Augusta’s biggest employer. If anything bad happened there, the town was in deep trouble.

I dropped the molding I had been cutting and trotted after him. As an afterthought, I stopped, turned to grab the silvery thing, and jammed it into my pocket. It didn’t seem like something to leave lying around outside, not even in the Bellamys’ yard. Especially not there, perhaps.

I can’t run like Floyd, because of my bad leg, but I can walk pretty fast when the need arises. I made it through the kitchen just as Floyd clattered up the stairs. I followed him up to find him standing outside his bedroom window out on the porch roof. From down the hall, Mr. Bellamy was yelling something about fire axes.

“What is it?” I asked. I knew Floyd could see part of Augusta from the porch roof if he stood on his toes and strained. The Bellamys’ farm was pretty high up on a ridge east of town, off Haverhill Road.

“Smoke,” said Floyd.

“Is it the refinery?”

“No, looks like a building fire. Let’s get into town.”

“I’ll drive,” I said. I wasn’t letting him touch the wheel of Doc Milliken’s Cadillac, and his truck was at my boarding house.

I limped downstairs and started the convertible. Floyd came running out of the house, carrying an axe and a shovel, followed by Mr. Bellamy moving more slowly, carrying another axe. They threw the tools in the back seat. Floyd jumped in after the tools, while Mr. Bellamy opened the passenger door and got in the front.

“Let’s go, Varian,” rasped Mr. Bellamy over the rumble of the Cadillac’s V-8 engine. As we pulled away, he began to cough.

We roared into town in the middle of an impromptu caravan of volunteer firefighters — everything from rattletrap hay wagons to a cut-down bus. As we drove up Highway 54 towards State Street, I had a sinking feeling about where the smoke was coming from. Reverend Little was at the head of our little caravan in his flatbed Chevy, and as he turned north onto State Street, I was sure the fire would be on Broadway.

It was. Mrs. Swenson’s boarding house was in flames. My heart seized with that moment of cold terror you experience when you fly over the neck of a horse, or try to land an airplane solo for the first time. The thick, tarry smell of a burning house filled my nose. It was hot to be near it, hotter than a summer’s day in the hay fields. Even the willow tree in the yard was burning, which in some illogical fashion struck me as a greater tragedy. The house was dying a terrible death. I prayed no one was dying with it.